Lauderdale, John, Part 3

ORAL HISTORY OF CARL “MR. YEARWOOD (CONTINUES)” YEARWOOD AND JOHN LAUDERDALE
Tape 3
Interviewed by Bill Sewell, Recreation Parks Director for the City of Oak Ridge
March 14, 1985
Interviewer: Today is March 14, 1985 and I’m talking with John Lauderdale, a longtime Oak Ridger and Carl “Rabbit” Yearwood, former Recreation Parks Director for the City of Oak Ridge and longtime Oak Ridger as well. I’m Bill Sewell, Recreation Parks Director for the City of Oak Ridge. John, this is not really recreation oriented or related but could you share with us some information that you have, regarding some early businessmen in Oak Ridge and how they came into being and are any of the early businessmen still around in Oak Ridge today, that were here back in the early ‘40s?
Mr. John Lauderdale: I speak from memory about some of the early business people of Oak Ridge, and many of them had prominent business enterprises here that were conducted by and owned by Knoxville businessmen. For instances, in the grocery business, furnishing food for this population, there was a Mr. Frank Tucker who was President of J. L. and Smith Milling Company, Mr. Julian Morton who was President of H.T. Hackney Company of Knoxville. The people operating facilities here in Oak Ridge was Mr. Horace Sherrod who operated the Community Store in Jackson Square, one of the main business grocery dispensers for the town; Mr. H.M. McKinnon who operated the, managed the Tulip Town Market in Grove Center, another very large retail grocer. As to what their business relations were other than owning stock in some of the enterprises here, also was Mr. Doug Cunningham who was a Knoxville Buick Dealer, and I believe, maybe another Mr. Morton who was with the Morton McCreary Chrysler Dealer. I’m not sure what his relation to the Julian Morton would be, with H.T. Hackney. Also a Mr. Ed Harris of Knoxville, and I don’t remember his affiliation but it was given to me when a friend ???? a few days ago. There were some things other than the very large swimming pool that Oak Ridge could claim or alleged that they had and were notable, and one was the Tulip Town Market in Grove Center. Mr. McKinnon told me one time that the total number of square feet in that grocery store including the two floors, was ranked very high in the size of the stores like that in the south. Now you must remember that grocery stores as of World War II time were definitely not comparable to 1985 food markets, supermarkets. They were very much smaller. They didn’t carry the very large number of commodities and they didn’t carry the number of brands. An ice cream company operating in Oak Ridge was the Taft Moody All American Ice Cream. Taft Moody had been an All American Football player at the University of Arkansas and he got into the ice cream business as a subsidiary of the Pet Milk Company, I believe, and the Pet Milk Company had a large operation in Greeneville I think. Now, Moody’s ability to make a very high quality ice cream which gained notoriety in the immediate neighborhood, and even in Knoxville, was that he had unlimited access to allocations of sugar and butterfat, both of which were regulated by the War Department, or the Control Board which I don’t remember the name, but whereas other on-going ice cream companies had to water down their product to economize with these, particularly the sugar and the butterfat ingredients, Moody going through the War Department here at Oak Ridge, and the Manhattan District had unlimited quantities and Taft Moody brought. Vaughn Moody told me that one time, that they had more business going through a little hole-in-the-wall operation, which at that time was located in Jackson Square between the drug store and Samuel’s Haberdashery. They had two floors and they made the ice cream in the basement in a freezer. And they sold it through an upstairs of very limited space and you had to walk in and get it and they just had room to serve you and get back out, that’s about all. You didn’t have time to or room to sit down and eat it.
Carl Yearwood: John, a lot of people might not quite understand how did you get even the narrowest space between Jackson Square Drugstore as it is today and Samuel’s. Jackson Square Drugstore was originally much smaller on the corner and expanded and took over the space that had been occupied by Taft Moody.
Mr. Lauderdale: That is correct. Those stores were different size then to what they are now. All of these people were very influential in getting the supplies because of their affiliation with Knoxville companies where then they got the supplies here to Oak Ridge. Now the Mr. Sherrod who operated this, what at that time was a large market at Jackson Square, but also the A&P Store operated there during the war and I believe they were...
Mr. Yearwood: Located where Watson’s is now.
Mr. Lauderdale: That’s right. It was in that building and they were recruited by the managers of the people interested, Manhattan District people invited them to come in because of their access to food.
Interviewer: I was going to ask, now that you mention that, I was going to ask, of course today we have the free enterprise system and anyone who wants to open a business, and it’s zoned properly, and they themselves have done a market study, and they think it’s profitable to open a business, they would just jump right in and open it. I would think that back in the early 40s especially under the tight security of Oak Ridge when it was being developed, did the early businessmen pioneers, did they have trouble securing business spaces or, did they have to have special permission to open a drug store or grocery store or how did that work? Do you remember?
Mr. Lauderdale: Well it’s my feeling that they were recruited by the management of the Manhattan Engineer District. Those people who were concerned with the community affairs would go out and recruit people who had access and had ability to furnish, and to get supplies. Take the case of H.T. Hackney, they were a very large wholesale grocer distributor and they also had exclusive right to Stokley VanKamps’ products, which had canneries up in East Tennessee and many other things. Then as I said the J. Allen Smith Milling Company and of course all the various cereals that they milled, I just point this out to say that the early Oak Ridge was dependent upon business people of the community and Knoxville in particular.
Interviewer: I think it’s kind of interesting that they would recruit and I say they, the government, the Manhattan District Public Affairs, would recruit businesses to come into Oak Ridge but they chose to handle the beer sales themselves, is that not true?
Mr. Yearwood: Not exactly. I think the beer sales came as a result of the desire to provide a recreation program in Oak Ridge and to provide a source of revenue so that it could be self sustaining. I thoroughly believe that H.T. Hackney, they had a way of, they did the biggest grocery business in this part of the country, already, and I’m sure that even the additional business, knowing what restrictions there were on what was going on, I would imagine that they had ways to cover and hide all the business that they did in Oak Ridge in any report that might become sensitive. I had an uncle, superintendent of traffic on the Southern Railway, and he knew that he sent a lot of freight trains into Oak Ridge, loaded. He knew that he got a lot of empty cars back but he never knew how that all happened. Because he said usually if you send something in, they’re going to make something that’s got to be shipped back out, but they never did ship anything back out. And I imagine that H.T. Hackney got a lot of food stuff in to their line of business and a lot of it out without anybody knowing who, why or where. They just had, well, after all, the Manhattan District Engineers, I guess you could say, they recruited the recreational formation, the formation of Recreation and Welfare Association as to provide the service of recreation to the people that were in Oak Ridge and more that were coming to Oak Ridge. I doubt very seriously if anybody will ever be able to tie all the details together. I doubt if they will ever be able to unravel all the details that took place. I think it’s great that we can take one little segment and that we’re primarily interested in, and that’s the recreation that was furnished to 75,000 people behind a wire fence, and no gasoline to go anywhere on vacation. You had to keep them happy. And I think we did a very good job of it. But all these services to the people, were to make it a livable condition. I’d say most of the people that lived in Oak Ridge lived in trying circumstances. Wouldn’t you John? Living in trailers, I mean, you know.
Mr. Lauderdale: Yes, they lived in...
Mr. Yearwood: Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of trailers.
Mr. Lauderdale: …difficult conditions. A great many of the parks were those where they had community bathhouses and sleeping quarters only in the habitation. One example that I recall, my father who lived in Mississippi at the time wanted to send me a package. And he took it to the Railway Express office to send it to Oak Ridge and they told him they wouldn’t take it because they had no Oak Ridge. He convinced them somehow that something that I had said about the size of the -????- or something like that, but I finally went to the Express office and he tore off a sheet off of a pad that he had which had what he called a block number on it and said send that to him and he’ll take the shipment. That was the way, that was one of the examples of secrecy or the lack of knowledge of this Oak Ridge town.
Mr. Yearwood: I think it’s interesting to know the year before the secret of Oak Ridge was let out, when it became worldwide, Rand McNally’s last map of the United States before that event, had Oak Ridge on it with the population of 75.
Interviewer: 75.
Mr. Yearwood: It was just a spot on the map.
Interviewer: You know that same uncertainty of where Oak Ridge was located still occurred back in, 20 years later, ‘cause when I was going to school at Middle Tennessee, I would have to put, and I was hitchhiking back and forth, that’s when hitchhiking was safe, but I would hitchhike back and forth to Murfreesboro, and I would have to put Nashville on my sign because no one knew where Murfreesboro was, and when I was coming back home, I would have to put Knoxville, because they still didn’t know where Oak Ridge was.
Mr. Yearwood: Bill, I’ve traveled a little bit since my retirement. This happens a lot of time before my retirement. Somebody asked me where I was from and I’d say Oak Ridge and they say where’s that? I mean they don’t, people today have forgotten 1945 or never knew 1945. Of course, its historical part in world’s history. So we, in Oak Ridge, think that, boy, everybody knows about us and that’s not true. Everybody doesn’t know about Oak Ridge, and you say the Atomic City. It’s getting to where you say the Atomic City now and they say, What?
Mr. Lauderdale: Maybe more of them know it as the energy center.
Mr. Yearwood: John, I think there’s one other business that so far as my understanding is concerned, that the Chevrolet place down on the east end of town was first Reeder Chevrolet and evidently is still in and out and under control of Reeder Chevrolet. They change the name down there a lot of times, Cherokee, and I know that’s a family trademark ‘cause they use to have Cherokee Oil Company and might still have Cherokee on it. What is it now? Courtesy?
Interviewer: Classic, I believe.
Mr. Yearwood: Classic. Well Chevrolet has model Classic someway or another, but it was one of the first businesses and...
Mr. Lauderdale: There was a difference in the name. The Knoxville current club Reeder, the patriarch of the clan that owned the present Reeder Chevrolet Company but they operated this company in Oak Ridge under the name Reeder Motor Company and Lefty Branham was the first manager. He’s still an Oak Ridge businessman.
Mr. Yearwood: And come to think about it, Lefty, wasn’t he in the construction business or something afterwards?
Mr. Lauderdale: Afterwards, yes.
Mr. Yearwood: And you see this little shelter up here in the park, Lefty Branham donated the labor to construct that shelter, and I suppose that he was a member of the Rotary Club.
Interviewer: I believe it was the Kiwanis Club.
Mr. Yearwood: Kiwanis Club at the time and Kiwanis Club furnished the money, the City furnished the area and Lefty Branham furnished the labor and materials to put it up.
Mr. Lauderdale: Last I knew of him he was a part-time fisherman and he went down to the Hiawassee River where he had a trot line and brought back a tub full of catfish and I was lucky enough to get two of them. One thing that might be interesting to those who know something about the Army, the military had a rule against naming anything, any locality or facility and so forth for a living member of the military. And by subterfuge the people named this center in Grove, the Grove Center here, of old General Groves who was the Major General and head of the Manhattan District, but they used a reason for naming that Grove Center was…
Mr. Yearwood: The big grove of trees.
Mr. Lauderdale: They had a big grove of trees, which is between the recreation hall and the crossroads down there, somewhat of a...
Mr. Yearwood: One of our official, I mean, first community parks ever used was Grove Center Park and it’s located by the Carbide Credit Union.
Interviewer: Is that the K-25 credit union?
Mr. Yearwood: In that general area. We had a big grove of trees there. I mean mammoth trees and picnic tables.
Interviewer: Wasn’t there a big house there?
Mr. Lauderdale: Yes, there was a very large house. There was one which I voted in other aid that owned by a man named Ethel Cross.
Mr. Yearwood: Ethel Cross, yeah.
Mr. Lauderdale: And he had a grocery, had a furniture store, I believe, in Clinton on the main part of Clinton.
Mr. Yearwood: I think that’s right, I think that’s right. He was.
Interviewer: I remember that was a beautiful house.
Mr. Yearwood: Oh yes, a mansion. Well, Ethel Cross’s daughter still lives in Clinton and his daughter and...
Mr. Lauderdale: Name is Hixson.
Mr. Yearwood: …my first wife were cousins, or maybe not first cousins but however it was because my first wife’s mother was a Cross.
Mr. Lauderdale: Man named Fred Norman, man that presumed to manage the farm and lived in that house and his daughter is Mrs. Queener who lives in Clinton now. She lamented to me not long ago that if they ever tore that house down, of course, she said it was the finest house she ever lived in. So she had a very nice house…
Interviewer: Let me ask. You mentioned Grove Center was named for someone. What about the other names here in Oak Ridge, how were their names attached?
Mr. Yearwood: Like what?
Interviewer: Well...
Mr. Yearwood: Robertsville Junior High School?
Interviewer: Well that’s a good example.
Mr. Yearwood: That’s what it was, Robertsville.
Mr. Lauderdale: That was an existing consolidated high school.
Interviewer: Okay. Throw that one out then, let’s see. How about Jackson Square? How about the streets in Oak Ridge? Does anyone want to talk about that?
Mr. Lauderdale: Well evidently Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, I think were the town architects selected by the Corps of Engineers. They devised the system of naming the main avenues for states, beginning with Arkansas, and then the streets leading off these arteries, starting them with the same letter that the state had. This was a very beneficial and very efficient way to acquaint a lot of strangers and wanderers, because everyone in Oak Ridge was a newcomer but the system that they devised for naming the streets and off streets and so forth, lanes for dead end streets and roads for circular or continuing access, I think it’s a good system and it has served well. And I suppose they still use that system in the names, and name a place, I mean a ‘lane’, and ‘place’ for dead end and short and smaller.
Interviewer: I know they tried to continue this consistency in the Planning Department but because of the new developments and the location of the new subdivisions in Oak Ridge they have to alter from that just a little bit but I believe they have pretty well maintained the alphabetical…
Mr. Lauderdale: It’s been a good effort.
Mr. Yearwood: Emory Valley has maintained it, I mean, Woodland has maintained it.
Interviewer: If you line everything up on a north south basis, of course, the old Oak Ridge used to be basically east-west, everything east and west. But now new subdivisions are occurring in the southwest or the southeast quadrant and it’s…
Mr. Yearwood: And it’s confusing to that extent but once you get to a street in Emory Valley that begins with “D”, you know that all the streets crossing or leading off from it are going to begin with a “D”.
Interviewer: Right.
Mr. Yearwood: So once you get in the neighborhood that you want to be in, then the alphabetical assistance comes forth. Now all the friction in Woodland area, they run across that before they ever did Emory Valley because Woodland was constructed before Emory Valley. They named those main thoroughfares after universities.
Interviewer: The only exception to this rule, I think, is the road that I live on right now and it is Mason Lane. And Mason Lane is the last road going west out next to the guard shacks and I don’t know how in the world they got Mason Lane off of a “W” street. That’s probably the only fluke I guess that there is.
Mr. Yearwood: Well...
Interviewer: Let’s talk just a moment about, well, getting back to these facilities and their names, how did Jackson Square get its name? It used to be Townsite, did it not?
Mr. Lauderdale: No I don’t believe that it was ever. Jackson Square was Jackson Square as far as I know back.
Mr. Yearwood: But I guess Townsite was a kind of...
Mr. Lauderdale: Region or something. And then they had Town Hall was a building there back then that still exists as...
Mr. Yearwood: …as Bank of Oak Ridge and the law firm in it, used to also where the law firm is facing...
Mr. Lauderdale: Tenkucky Building now isn’t it?
Mr. Yearwood: Tentucket or something.
Interviewer: Right on the corner of Tennessee and Kentucky.
Mr. Yearwood: Yeah, and a lot of newcomers to Oak Ridge might not realize that one of the original fire departments was located in the south end of the building.
Interviewer: There used to be a two story fire building because I remember as a kid we used to go up where they slept and slide down the brass rail.
Mr. Yearwood: That’s right and they kept fire trucks down below.
Interviewer: Are there any other names that come to mind that…any early pioneers that are still around today?
Mr. Yearwood: No, I was trying to think of one undeveloped recreation is Haw Ridge. Haw Ridge is at Haw Ridge, so it didn’t gain that name from anything except the fact that that park is located on Haw Ridge.
Interviewer: I’ll give you another good example, but I think let’s continue this on the other side of the tape because we are just about to run out of tape here…
[side 2]
Interviewer: ...how certain names are attached to certain facilities and one thing that comes to mind is Blankenship.
Mr. Yearwood: Blankenship Field is named after the first Superintendent of Education of schools in Oak Ridge. I think I got that right. He was first Superintendent of schools. He came in and set up the school system, I can’t recall his first name right now.
Interviewer: While we’re on that subject...
Mr. Yearwood: I think he was also first president of Oak Ridge Lion’s Club.
Interviewer: Oh, is that right? While we’re on that subject, of course we’re making this tape in the Civic Center Clubroom and we have a room down the hall, the Shep Lauter Room, which was named after a long-term, long time Oak Ridge resident as well as a recreation employee. Rabbit would you like to…
Mr. Yearwood: Well of course, Shep came to work in Oak Ridge in 1944, and it was my good fortune to, I guess, become more closely related work-wise and friendship-wise with Shep than any other one, because the friendship and closeness that started in 19--, early in 1945, ran through 1983, no he died in early ’84. Shep was a remarkable man when it came to dealing with people, particularly young people. Shep had no prior training of working with young people except he did coach athletics at a school there in ?Met McCauley? School in Memphis, I mean Chattanooga. I know our friendship started because one of my first jobs when I came as director of playgrounds, I’m director of, supervisors of playgrounds, was to make a survey of all the areas that we were going to operate as playgrounds that year, which happened to be 22 locations and all of the Tot Lots which happened to be in 125 locations, inspect each one of them and turn in work orders for each one of them to be completed for the summer season. They handed me a map, and Shep to guide it, and there’s always a standing joke because maps weren’t too easy to follow in those days and we’d be driving down and Shep said “you’re supposed to have turned right there.” So that was always a gag, “you’re supposed to have turned right there”, but we finally found all of them. I mean, this is a start of a long term relationship. Shep worked more in adult activities in those early days, and I guess you’d say he was assistant director of adult activities, adult athletic activity. But then they opened the Wildcat Den Youth Center in the, now my years are getting mixed up, I forget whether he was in the, no, that’s right, he never managed, supervised Club Fiesta. He supervised in the Wildcat Den, and he was a natural because he had respect for youth and in return the youth had respect for him. Then Club Fiesta which was then for Junior High kids, now is the Senior Center. Shep went to that facility when they closed the Central Recreation Center in the old Central Cafeteria and was there till we built the new facility, the Civic Center Recreation Building where Shep moved and supervised youth activities for, well, from 1970, I guess a little over a year before he retired. Did I say Shep had a great confidence in the young people? He coached and directed Shep Lauter School, Baseball School, for years and years from 1945, I guess, when we first organized it until, oh, up in the ‘60s. But Shep used to have complete understanding of young people, particularly the boys. If they did anything like, you know, having a little swig or two before they came to the building, there’s a strict rule against it. If you came there with the smell of alcohol on your breath, it was an automatic two weeks suspension. And Shep didn’t have to say it. All he did was slap two fingers of his right hand on his left wrist and they’d say “see you next week”, I mean, “see you in two weeks, Shep”, because they knew they had done that. And I’ll never forget the time that he asked a young boy to leave because he’d had a drink, and, in a few minutes why the boy’s mother called and says, “Mr. Lauter, I understand that you had my boy to leave the Wildcat Den because he had a drink before he got there”, “Yes ma’m”, he says, “we have a rule down here.” She says, “well I’ll have you know, that I gave him that drink before he left home”, and Shep said, “well Mrs. So-and-so, I don’t care how many drinks you give him but he’s not coming in the Wildcat Den with one”. But I think that to cap it all off, on his way of getting along with people, after we had opened the new center here, we were standing about in front of what is now your office and my office and we looked down the hall and there’s an adult sitting on the edge of one of the refreshment tables which was strictly against the rules. Shep looked at me and says, “looky there, that man down there’s sitting on that table and we don’t even let the children sit on the tables. What am I going to do?” I said, “I don’t know, I said, that’s your job Shep.” Well, some other people were standing there with me, so we just watched Shep when he went down there and he just walked up and the man got off of the table and they stood there and talked for a long time. Eventually Shep came back and he’s laughing when he came back and I said, “what did you tell him, Shep?” He said, “well I told him, if you don’t get off that table, two weeks suspension” and he said the man laughed and got off the table and then they had a nice friendly. Now to cap the whole thing though, when we were building or in the process of constructing this facility we’re sitting in today, some of the kids from the Wildcat Den went to Shep and said, “Shep, we want to have one of the rooms in the new facility named the Shep Lauter Room” and Shep said, “No, no,” he says. “They don’t name things after people until they’re dead” and says, “I want to stick around for a while.” Well they didn’t take that for an answer. They came to me. And Shep in the meantime had told me about them coming to him, so when they came to me, I gave them the same spiel, I said, no, you just don’t do that. So then they went to the City Manager and he told them the same thing. Well that really got them worked up so they just got some petitions and they got somewhere in the neighborhood of 700-750 names on the petition and took it to City Council and City Council said, “we’ll name the room after Shep Lauter” so...
Mr. Lauderdale: That’s where the votes were.
Mr. Yearwood: That’s where the votes were and too, I think that anyone in Oak Ridge that had any interest in the welfare of young people knew Shep Lauter. Everyone of those councilmen at that time, I can’t remember who all they were at that time, I’m sure everyone of them knew Shep either personally or had, maybe a few of them, had been teenagers under Shep, but they either knew of him through personal contact or knew of the type of work he did.
Interviewer: I know as a youngster growing up in Oak Ridge and participating in Wildcat Den and in the baseball program too, Shep was well loved and well liked and did a tremendous job with the youth like you were saying. But you know you mentioned something a few minutes ago that, of course, you don’t name a facility after someone who’s alive. I’m talking to you right here today and we have a facility named after you.
Mr. Yearwood: I’m afraid if I’d been here when that was getting ready to be done, I would have said the same thing that Shep did. But there’s a funny thing about that. Just before retiring I took a two weeks vacation and went to California and when I got back to Oak Ridge, I came, coming from Knoxville, I came up Emory Valley Road and turned right up by the ballpark and they were putting my name up on the sideboard. And that was the first inkling that that I’d had about it. I’ve had a great deal of pleasure, great deal of inward satisfaction of having been so honored because it is an honor. I run across someone every once in a while and, some place just in the last two or three days, and I had to write a check for something, and the young man took the check and put it in the cash register and, didn’t even look at the name on it, and he said well he did see it, the Energy Bank, and he said he lived in Oak Ridge for eight years. Carolyn was with me, and she said, did you ever play ball on Carl Yearwood Park? He said, I sure have and she said, well that’s him. My, my.
Interviewer: Well, I thought you were dead.
Mr. Yearwood: Well, I tell you now I had that experience too. We were having a party at the Hilyards and in the backroom and we didn’t have as many people show up for the party and they had a lot of customers waiting, so we told them just to go ahead and use the booths around us that we weren’t using. I was sitting at the table right in the center and this couple, two couples and then, that one child came in, and they sat down in a booth and I kind of noticed that this fellow sitting over on the side kept looking at me and I kept looking at him, trying get placed in my mind who he was. And he was trying, I found out later he was trying to get in his mind whether I was really who he thought I was. It was Paul Owens and he’d participated as a participant and umpire and official in softball, baseball and basketball for years. He had moved off from Oak Ridge. He came back and he thought they named the ballpark Carl Yearwood Park so he thought Carl Yearwood had gone, gone. He, finally, he finally broke down and says, “you are Rabbit aren’t you?” And I said, “yeah, I’m Rabbit” and he says, “boys, I knew it had to be but I didn’t think it was.” So, but I’ve run across a lot of people and it very unusual, and, I would say, for those who that they might eventually name a facility or a street or anything after them, that to go ahead and do it while they’re alive and let them enjoy it. You know Shep, during that last year that he was working with the Recreation Department, had a great joy in working with the kids in the Shep Lauter Room. Every time I have to convince somebody that I’m still alive, why, it’s nice. I wish that if they’d named Bob Hopkins Field after a fine young man worked closely with me, not a paid but a volunteer worker with the youth of Oak Ridge. He’d grown up in Oak Ridge and unfortunately hadn’t reached the mature age of retirement. But thank goodness they honored him by naming a baseball facility after him because baseball was the area in which he participated most greatly.
Interviewer: Bobby was an all American baseball player at UT wasn’t he?
Mr. Yearwood: No that was B. B.
Interviewer: That was B.B., his brother?
Mr. Yearwood: B.B., his older brother. I knew both of them in Fontana before I came to Oak Ridge. B.B.’s is quite a story too, I mean personally. When we lived in Fontana, B.B. came to me and wanted me to sponsor the tennis tournament for the boys and girls. I kind of put him off, I said, Bobby, B.B., I said, you organize it and run it and I’ll buy the trophies. He got 64 boys to play in the tennis tournament that he won and he got. But he was, now I think. What’s the other ballpark?
Interviewer: Grey Strang, I was going to mention we have a couple of other facilities, Grey Strang Park was named after Grey Strang...
Mr. Yearwood: After a tragic…
Interviewer: Yeah, a young man that died while he was employed with the City of Oak Ridge. It was a tragic accident. But, he was also a baseball player and ... Mr. Yearwood: …now...
Interviewer: …soon to be star, I think, at the University of Tennessee, an untimely death. We have a park on the eastern end...
Mr. Yearwood: Milt Dickens?
Interviewer: Milt Dickens Park.
Mr. Yearwood: Milt Dickens is legendary in Oak Ridge as far as I’m concerned or any ???? time, because he was not only the, an official himself of all sports and baseball, softball, football, but he was also, he served many years as a scheduling secretary for the official’s association. Of all the thankless jobs in the world that has to be the most thankless one. But he always went to training courses so that he himself could be informed of any rule changes, and pass them along to the other officials. And I’m sure the official association now functions very much on the same level as Milt Dickens helped in his time to raise it to. And a consequence that, I wish I could think of the fellow that used to be with the bus company, Bill something.
Interviewer: Bill Hatfield.
Mr. Yearwood: Bill Hatfield. Bill Hatfield should also be another one that some facility be named after, ‘cause he was the scheduling secretary on the original umpires group.
Interviewer: That’s interesting.
Mr. Yearwood: And he was an official himself. He served scheduling.
Interviewer: You mentioned Milt Dickens, it’s kind of ironic that his son Larry Dickens now is on City Council. Certainly don’t mean to eliminate anybody that a facility or structure has been named after, and I’m sure that I probably have, but certainly don’t mean to offend anyone if I have.
Mr. Yearwood: I don’t know of any other recreation facilities that have been designated after individuals.
Mr. Lauderdale: Something here named for Al Bissell isn’t there?
Mr. Yearwood: Oh yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah, the park that we’re here right now.
Mr. Yearwood: The park is named and I’m sure everybody knows the contribution that Al Bissell has made for Oak Ridge. You know, when I first retired, I started traveling with a friend of mine, peddling recreation equipment. I never went in to, a city manager or city administrator or county judge or anybody of that level, and mentioned I was from Oak Ridge, “Oh, I know your old mayor up there, boy… Old Al, Al, how’s Al doing?” I mean from one end of the state to another, everybody knows Al Bissell and that’s remarkable for a man to be known as extensively as Al was and, or Al is, thank goodness he still is. Although he’s not in the public eye right now like he was for years.
Mr. Lauderdale: A.K. Jr. makes the television news now because he’s trying to get some safety in trucking.
Interviewer: He’s Public Safety Commissioner.
Mr. Lauderdale: Yes, chancellor, chairman of the state utilities commission.
Interviewer: Well, how about the word Oak Ridge? Heard a lot about that as far as how the name was selected. Do ya’ll recall how that name was selected?
Mr. Yearwood: Well that was, that was selected.
Interviewer: Fairly obvious…
Mr. Lauderdale: I have heard…
Interviewer: …oak trees out here in the park but...
Mr. Lauderdale: I have heard that it was selected by someone in the hierarchy of the Manhattan District because, for its rustic connotation or uninconspicuous.
Mr. Yearwood: Inconspicuous.
Mr. Lauderdale: Now this ridge, the Black Oak Ridge runs from, I guess, from Union County all the way through, down into Roane County. This same ridge is on the geological maps and things like that, but I would...
Mr. Yearwood: I would say there’s nothing in the area that would, that Oak Ridge would have the connotation of, you know, that it would give somebody the chance to pinpoint.
Mr. Lauderdale: It wouldn’t be conspicuous.
Mr. Yearwood: Completely foreign to this area.
Mr. Lauderdale: …create curiosity and things like that. The anonymity was a key word for everything that had to do with the Manhattan Project, just be low key. And that, I’ve heard that was said and I can imagine that taking a U.S geological survey map which no doubt they did, looking at this, well there’s this Black Oak Ridge down through there, why don’t we just call it Oak Ridge. Strictly surmising.
Interviewer: There are a lot of interesting things I guess in regards to naming and so forth but that makes sense as far as being real close to Black Oak Ridge and Oak Ridge itself being named that. There’s one other facility and I think Rabbit you probably can enlighten us on how Big Turtle Park got its name.
Mr. Yearwood: That’s kind of recent vintage. Some time, a year or so before I was eventually retired, Ken Stillman was with me on a, we had been requested to select possible sites for future development of recreation facilities. And at that time it was known that water treatment area was going to be moved, and that that area which is now Big Turtle Park, would become available for development. We had a park supervisor, Brighton at that time. He and Ken and I went down to make a survey. We had great ideas. We were going to take the settlement beds and make gardens in them, I mean, raise plants and flowers. We were going to take some of the big brown water treatment areas and make a dry flower bed in one of them and a water flower garden in another, and we were going to convert the building where they had all the chemicals and everything, you know, treatment and reconvert that into a clubhouse for the women’s club. That kind of helped us survey and plan and work with flower and gardening and all. Just out of the clear blue sky, Ken looked over to the big domed, domed cover...
Interviewer: Digester?
Mr. Yearwood: Digester whatever, and says, he says, “you know when we start to develop this thing we could put a head on that thing and a little tail on it and put some ladders to climb, and some slides to slide down, and call it just like a big turtle, so lets just call this Big Turtle Park”. So we designated that area on our report as Big Turtle Park and then we had to, that we mention as a park beginning to develop there and that it was the name, Big Turtle Park, was selected. So as far as I know the big digester is going to be there for quite awhile and I can see no reason why it couldn’t. Now I’ve never been inside the digester.
Interviewer: I never had either but I think that’s it going to stay around awhile, I hope it is anyway because that is the focal point to the park.
Mr. Yearwood: Well, now that you know, you know when you envision it that might be a wild idea but I’ve never been in a, when you study the heavens….
Interviewer: Astronomy?
Mr. Yearwood: Yeah, but I mean what do you call the...
Interviewer: Observatory?
Mr. Yearwood: Observatory or what not. Why couldn’t the inside, couldn’t be cleaned out and made into a...
Interviewer: That’s an interesting idea, sure is.
Mr. Yearwood: Up at big park up around Eastman Kodak, a park in upper East Tennessee, they have one that’s domed with big easy chairs. You go back in there and you sit and flash all the stars in the heavens and give you a nice lecture about it.
Interviewer: That’s an real interesting idea. Maybe we ought to open the doors to that digester and see what’s in there. It’d certainly take some cleaning out wouldn’t it?
Mr. Yearwood: I think it, I think that might be the first stumbling block.
Interviewer: Well gentlemen, we are running out of tape once again and I want to thank both of you for coming down and talking with us today and once again this is March 14, 1985.
Transcribed: November 2005
Typed by LB

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ORAL HISTORY OF CARL “MR. YEARWOOD (CONTINUES)” YEARWOOD AND JOHN LAUDERDALE
Tape 3
Interviewed by Bill Sewell, Recreation Parks Director for the City of Oak Ridge
March 14, 1985
Interviewer: Today is March 14, 1985 and I’m talking with John Lauderdale, a longtime Oak Ridger and Carl “Rabbit” Yearwood, former Recreation Parks Director for the City of Oak Ridge and longtime Oak Ridger as well. I’m Bill Sewell, Recreation Parks Director for the City of Oak Ridge. John, this is not really recreation oriented or related but could you share with us some information that you have, regarding some early businessmen in Oak Ridge and how they came into being and are any of the early businessmen still around in Oak Ridge today, that were here back in the early ‘40s?
Mr. John Lauderdale: I speak from memory about some of the early business people of Oak Ridge, and many of them had prominent business enterprises here that were conducted by and owned by Knoxville businessmen. For instances, in the grocery business, furnishing food for this population, there was a Mr. Frank Tucker who was President of J. L. and Smith Milling Company, Mr. Julian Morton who was President of H.T. Hackney Company of Knoxville. The people operating facilities here in Oak Ridge was Mr. Horace Sherrod who operated the Community Store in Jackson Square, one of the main business grocery dispensers for the town; Mr. H.M. McKinnon who operated the, managed the Tulip Town Market in Grove Center, another very large retail grocer. As to what their business relations were other than owning stock in some of the enterprises here, also was Mr. Doug Cunningham who was a Knoxville Buick Dealer, and I believe, maybe another Mr. Morton who was with the Morton McCreary Chrysler Dealer. I’m not sure what his relation to the Julian Morton would be, with H.T. Hackney. Also a Mr. Ed Harris of Knoxville, and I don’t remember his affiliation but it was given to me when a friend ???? a few days ago. There were some things other than the very large swimming pool that Oak Ridge could claim or alleged that they had and were notable, and one was the Tulip Town Market in Grove Center. Mr. McKinnon told me one time that the total number of square feet in that grocery store including the two floors, was ranked very high in the size of the stores like that in the south. Now you must remember that grocery stores as of World War II time were definitely not comparable to 1985 food markets, supermarkets. They were very much smaller. They didn’t carry the very large number of commodities and they didn’t carry the number of brands. An ice cream company operating in Oak Ridge was the Taft Moody All American Ice Cream. Taft Moody had been an All American Football player at the University of Arkansas and he got into the ice cream business as a subsidiary of the Pet Milk Company, I believe, and the Pet Milk Company had a large operation in Greeneville I think. Now, Moody’s ability to make a very high quality ice cream which gained notoriety in the immediate neighborhood, and even in Knoxville, was that he had unlimited access to allocations of sugar and butterfat, both of which were regulated by the War Department, or the Control Board which I don’t remember the name, but whereas other on-going ice cream companies had to water down their product to economize with these, particularly the sugar and the butterfat ingredients, Moody going through the War Department here at Oak Ridge, and the Manhattan District had unlimited quantities and Taft Moody brought. Vaughn Moody told me that one time, that they had more business going through a little hole-in-the-wall operation, which at that time was located in Jackson Square between the drug store and Samuel’s Haberdashery. They had two floors and they made the ice cream in the basement in a freezer. And they sold it through an upstairs of very limited space and you had to walk in and get it and they just had room to serve you and get back out, that’s about all. You didn’t have time to or room to sit down and eat it.
Carl Yearwood: John, a lot of people might not quite understand how did you get even the narrowest space between Jackson Square Drugstore as it is today and Samuel’s. Jackson Square Drugstore was originally much smaller on the corner and expanded and took over the space that had been occupied by Taft Moody.
Mr. Lauderdale: That is correct. Those stores were different size then to what they are now. All of these people were very influential in getting the supplies because of their affiliation with Knoxville companies where then they got the supplies here to Oak Ridge. Now the Mr. Sherrod who operated this, what at that time was a large market at Jackson Square, but also the A&P Store operated there during the war and I believe they were...
Mr. Yearwood: Located where Watson’s is now.
Mr. Lauderdale: That’s right. It was in that building and they were recruited by the managers of the people interested, Manhattan District people invited them to come in because of their access to food.
Interviewer: I was going to ask, now that you mention that, I was going to ask, of course today we have the free enterprise system and anyone who wants to open a business, and it’s zoned properly, and they themselves have done a market study, and they think it’s profitable to open a business, they would just jump right in and open it. I would think that back in the early 40s especially under the tight security of Oak Ridge when it was being developed, did the early businessmen pioneers, did they have trouble securing business spaces or, did they have to have special permission to open a drug store or grocery store or how did that work? Do you remember?
Mr. Lauderdale: Well it’s my feeling that they were recruited by the management of the Manhattan Engineer District. Those people who were concerned with the community affairs would go out and recruit people who had access and had ability to furnish, and to get supplies. Take the case of H.T. Hackney, they were a very large wholesale grocer distributor and they also had exclusive right to Stokley VanKamps’ products, which had canneries up in East Tennessee and many other things. Then as I said the J. Allen Smith Milling Company and of course all the various cereals that they milled, I just point this out to say that the early Oak Ridge was dependent upon business people of the community and Knoxville in particular.
Interviewer: I think it’s kind of interesting that they would recruit and I say they, the government, the Manhattan District Public Affairs, would recruit businesses to come into Oak Ridge but they chose to handle the beer sales themselves, is that not true?
Mr. Yearwood: Not exactly. I think the beer sales came as a result of the desire to provide a recreation program in Oak Ridge and to provide a source of revenue so that it could be self sustaining. I thoroughly believe that H.T. Hackney, they had a way of, they did the biggest grocery business in this part of the country, already, and I’m sure that even the additional business, knowing what restrictions there were on what was going on, I would imagine that they had ways to cover and hide all the business that they did in Oak Ridge in any report that might become sensitive. I had an uncle, superintendent of traffic on the Southern Railway, and he knew that he sent a lot of freight trains into Oak Ridge, loaded. He knew that he got a lot of empty cars back but he never knew how that all happened. Because he said usually if you send something in, they’re going to make something that’s got to be shipped back out, but they never did ship anything back out. And I imagine that H.T. Hackney got a lot of food stuff in to their line of business and a lot of it out without anybody knowing who, why or where. They just had, well, after all, the Manhattan District Engineers, I guess you could say, they recruited the recreational formation, the formation of Recreation and Welfare Association as to provide the service of recreation to the people that were in Oak Ridge and more that were coming to Oak Ridge. I doubt very seriously if anybody will ever be able to tie all the details together. I doubt if they will ever be able to unravel all the details that took place. I think it’s great that we can take one little segment and that we’re primarily interested in, and that’s the recreation that was furnished to 75,000 people behind a wire fence, and no gasoline to go anywhere on vacation. You had to keep them happy. And I think we did a very good job of it. But all these services to the people, were to make it a livable condition. I’d say most of the people that lived in Oak Ridge lived in trying circumstances. Wouldn’t you John? Living in trailers, I mean, you know.
Mr. Lauderdale: Yes, they lived in...
Mr. Yearwood: Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of trailers.
Mr. Lauderdale: …difficult conditions. A great many of the parks were those where they had community bathhouses and sleeping quarters only in the habitation. One example that I recall, my father who lived in Mississippi at the time wanted to send me a package. And he took it to the Railway Express office to send it to Oak Ridge and they told him they wouldn’t take it because they had no Oak Ridge. He convinced them somehow that something that I had said about the size of the -????- or something like that, but I finally went to the Express office and he tore off a sheet off of a pad that he had which had what he called a block number on it and said send that to him and he’ll take the shipment. That was the way, that was one of the examples of secrecy or the lack of knowledge of this Oak Ridge town.
Mr. Yearwood: I think it’s interesting to know the year before the secret of Oak Ridge was let out, when it became worldwide, Rand McNally’s last map of the United States before that event, had Oak Ridge on it with the population of 75.
Interviewer: 75.
Mr. Yearwood: It was just a spot on the map.
Interviewer: You know that same uncertainty of where Oak Ridge was located still occurred back in, 20 years later, ‘cause when I was going to school at Middle Tennessee, I would have to put, and I was hitchhiking back and forth, that’s when hitchhiking was safe, but I would hitchhike back and forth to Murfreesboro, and I would have to put Nashville on my sign because no one knew where Murfreesboro was, and when I was coming back home, I would have to put Knoxville, because they still didn’t know where Oak Ridge was.
Mr. Yearwood: Bill, I’ve traveled a little bit since my retirement. This happens a lot of time before my retirement. Somebody asked me where I was from and I’d say Oak Ridge and they say where’s that? I mean they don’t, people today have forgotten 1945 or never knew 1945. Of course, its historical part in world’s history. So we, in Oak Ridge, think that, boy, everybody knows about us and that’s not true. Everybody doesn’t know about Oak Ridge, and you say the Atomic City. It’s getting to where you say the Atomic City now and they say, What?
Mr. Lauderdale: Maybe more of them know it as the energy center.
Mr. Yearwood: John, I think there’s one other business that so far as my understanding is concerned, that the Chevrolet place down on the east end of town was first Reeder Chevrolet and evidently is still in and out and under control of Reeder Chevrolet. They change the name down there a lot of times, Cherokee, and I know that’s a family trademark ‘cause they use to have Cherokee Oil Company and might still have Cherokee on it. What is it now? Courtesy?
Interviewer: Classic, I believe.
Mr. Yearwood: Classic. Well Chevrolet has model Classic someway or another, but it was one of the first businesses and...
Mr. Lauderdale: There was a difference in the name. The Knoxville current club Reeder, the patriarch of the clan that owned the present Reeder Chevrolet Company but they operated this company in Oak Ridge under the name Reeder Motor Company and Lefty Branham was the first manager. He’s still an Oak Ridge businessman.
Mr. Yearwood: And come to think about it, Lefty, wasn’t he in the construction business or something afterwards?
Mr. Lauderdale: Afterwards, yes.
Mr. Yearwood: And you see this little shelter up here in the park, Lefty Branham donated the labor to construct that shelter, and I suppose that he was a member of the Rotary Club.
Interviewer: I believe it was the Kiwanis Club.
Mr. Yearwood: Kiwanis Club at the time and Kiwanis Club furnished the money, the City furnished the area and Lefty Branham furnished the labor and materials to put it up.
Mr. Lauderdale: Last I knew of him he was a part-time fisherman and he went down to the Hiawassee River where he had a trot line and brought back a tub full of catfish and I was lucky enough to get two of them. One thing that might be interesting to those who know something about the Army, the military had a rule against naming anything, any locality or facility and so forth for a living member of the military. And by subterfuge the people named this center in Grove, the Grove Center here, of old General Groves who was the Major General and head of the Manhattan District, but they used a reason for naming that Grove Center was…
Mr. Yearwood: The big grove of trees.
Mr. Lauderdale: They had a big grove of trees, which is between the recreation hall and the crossroads down there, somewhat of a...
Mr. Yearwood: One of our official, I mean, first community parks ever used was Grove Center Park and it’s located by the Carbide Credit Union.
Interviewer: Is that the K-25 credit union?
Mr. Yearwood: In that general area. We had a big grove of trees there. I mean mammoth trees and picnic tables.
Interviewer: Wasn’t there a big house there?
Mr. Lauderdale: Yes, there was a very large house. There was one which I voted in other aid that owned by a man named Ethel Cross.
Mr. Yearwood: Ethel Cross, yeah.
Mr. Lauderdale: And he had a grocery, had a furniture store, I believe, in Clinton on the main part of Clinton.
Mr. Yearwood: I think that’s right, I think that’s right. He was.
Interviewer: I remember that was a beautiful house.
Mr. Yearwood: Oh yes, a mansion. Well, Ethel Cross’s daughter still lives in Clinton and his daughter and...
Mr. Lauderdale: Name is Hixson.
Mr. Yearwood: …my first wife were cousins, or maybe not first cousins but however it was because my first wife’s mother was a Cross.
Mr. Lauderdale: Man named Fred Norman, man that presumed to manage the farm and lived in that house and his daughter is Mrs. Queener who lives in Clinton now. She lamented to me not long ago that if they ever tore that house down, of course, she said it was the finest house she ever lived in. So she had a very nice house…
Interviewer: Let me ask. You mentioned Grove Center was named for someone. What about the other names here in Oak Ridge, how were their names attached?
Mr. Yearwood: Like what?
Interviewer: Well...
Mr. Yearwood: Robertsville Junior High School?
Interviewer: Well that’s a good example.
Mr. Yearwood: That’s what it was, Robertsville.
Mr. Lauderdale: That was an existing consolidated high school.
Interviewer: Okay. Throw that one out then, let’s see. How about Jackson Square? How about the streets in Oak Ridge? Does anyone want to talk about that?
Mr. Lauderdale: Well evidently Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, I think were the town architects selected by the Corps of Engineers. They devised the system of naming the main avenues for states, beginning with Arkansas, and then the streets leading off these arteries, starting them with the same letter that the state had. This was a very beneficial and very efficient way to acquaint a lot of strangers and wanderers, because everyone in Oak Ridge was a newcomer but the system that they devised for naming the streets and off streets and so forth, lanes for dead end streets and roads for circular or continuing access, I think it’s a good system and it has served well. And I suppose they still use that system in the names, and name a place, I mean a ‘lane’, and ‘place’ for dead end and short and smaller.
Interviewer: I know they tried to continue this consistency in the Planning Department but because of the new developments and the location of the new subdivisions in Oak Ridge they have to alter from that just a little bit but I believe they have pretty well maintained the alphabetical…
Mr. Lauderdale: It’s been a good effort.
Mr. Yearwood: Emory Valley has maintained it, I mean, Woodland has maintained it.
Interviewer: If you line everything up on a north south basis, of course, the old Oak Ridge used to be basically east-west, everything east and west. But now new subdivisions are occurring in the southwest or the southeast quadrant and it’s…
Mr. Yearwood: And it’s confusing to that extent but once you get to a street in Emory Valley that begins with “D”, you know that all the streets crossing or leading off from it are going to begin with a “D”.
Interviewer: Right.
Mr. Yearwood: So once you get in the neighborhood that you want to be in, then the alphabetical assistance comes forth. Now all the friction in Woodland area, they run across that before they ever did Emory Valley because Woodland was constructed before Emory Valley. They named those main thoroughfares after universities.
Interviewer: The only exception to this rule, I think, is the road that I live on right now and it is Mason Lane. And Mason Lane is the last road going west out next to the guard shacks and I don’t know how in the world they got Mason Lane off of a “W” street. That’s probably the only fluke I guess that there is.
Mr. Yearwood: Well...
Interviewer: Let’s talk just a moment about, well, getting back to these facilities and their names, how did Jackson Square get its name? It used to be Townsite, did it not?
Mr. Lauderdale: No I don’t believe that it was ever. Jackson Square was Jackson Square as far as I know back.
Mr. Yearwood: But I guess Townsite was a kind of...
Mr. Lauderdale: Region or something. And then they had Town Hall was a building there back then that still exists as...
Mr. Yearwood: …as Bank of Oak Ridge and the law firm in it, used to also where the law firm is facing...
Mr. Lauderdale: Tenkucky Building now isn’t it?
Mr. Yearwood: Tentucket or something.
Interviewer: Right on the corner of Tennessee and Kentucky.
Mr. Yearwood: Yeah, and a lot of newcomers to Oak Ridge might not realize that one of the original fire departments was located in the south end of the building.
Interviewer: There used to be a two story fire building because I remember as a kid we used to go up where they slept and slide down the brass rail.
Mr. Yearwood: That’s right and they kept fire trucks down below.
Interviewer: Are there any other names that come to mind that…any early pioneers that are still around today?
Mr. Yearwood: No, I was trying to think of one undeveloped recreation is Haw Ridge. Haw Ridge is at Haw Ridge, so it didn’t gain that name from anything except the fact that that park is located on Haw Ridge.
Interviewer: I’ll give you another good example, but I think let’s continue this on the other side of the tape because we are just about to run out of tape here…
[side 2]
Interviewer: ...how certain names are attached to certain facilities and one thing that comes to mind is Blankenship.
Mr. Yearwood: Blankenship Field is named after the first Superintendent of Education of schools in Oak Ridge. I think I got that right. He was first Superintendent of schools. He came in and set up the school system, I can’t recall his first name right now.
Interviewer: While we’re on that subject...
Mr. Yearwood: I think he was also first president of Oak Ridge Lion’s Club.
Interviewer: Oh, is that right? While we’re on that subject, of course we’re making this tape in the Civic Center Clubroom and we have a room down the hall, the Shep Lauter Room, which was named after a long-term, long time Oak Ridge resident as well as a recreation employee. Rabbit would you like to…
Mr. Yearwood: Well of course, Shep came to work in Oak Ridge in 1944, and it was my good fortune to, I guess, become more closely related work-wise and friendship-wise with Shep than any other one, because the friendship and closeness that started in 19--, early in 1945, ran through 1983, no he died in early ’84. Shep was a remarkable man when it came to dealing with people, particularly young people. Shep had no prior training of working with young people except he did coach athletics at a school there in ?Met McCauley? School in Memphis, I mean Chattanooga. I know our friendship started because one of my first jobs when I came as director of playgrounds, I’m director of, supervisors of playgrounds, was to make a survey of all the areas that we were going to operate as playgrounds that year, which happened to be 22 locations and all of the Tot Lots which happened to be in 125 locations, inspect each one of them and turn in work orders for each one of them to be completed for the summer season. They handed me a map, and Shep to guide it, and there’s always a standing joke because maps weren’t too easy to follow in those days and we’d be driving down and Shep said “you’re supposed to have turned right there.” So that was always a gag, “you’re supposed to have turned right there”, but we finally found all of them. I mean, this is a start of a long term relationship. Shep worked more in adult activities in those early days, and I guess you’d say he was assistant director of adult activities, adult athletic activity. But then they opened the Wildcat Den Youth Center in the, now my years are getting mixed up, I forget whether he was in the, no, that’s right, he never managed, supervised Club Fiesta. He supervised in the Wildcat Den, and he was a natural because he had respect for youth and in return the youth had respect for him. Then Club Fiesta which was then for Junior High kids, now is the Senior Center. Shep went to that facility when they closed the Central Recreation Center in the old Central Cafeteria and was there till we built the new facility, the Civic Center Recreation Building where Shep moved and supervised youth activities for, well, from 1970, I guess a little over a year before he retired. Did I say Shep had a great confidence in the young people? He coached and directed Shep Lauter School, Baseball School, for years and years from 1945, I guess, when we first organized it until, oh, up in the ‘60s. But Shep used to have complete understanding of young people, particularly the boys. If they did anything like, you know, having a little swig or two before they came to the building, there’s a strict rule against it. If you came there with the smell of alcohol on your breath, it was an automatic two weeks suspension. And Shep didn’t have to say it. All he did was slap two fingers of his right hand on his left wrist and they’d say “see you next week”, I mean, “see you in two weeks, Shep”, because they knew they had done that. And I’ll never forget the time that he asked a young boy to leave because he’d had a drink, and, in a few minutes why the boy’s mother called and says, “Mr. Lauter, I understand that you had my boy to leave the Wildcat Den because he had a drink before he got there”, “Yes ma’m”, he says, “we have a rule down here.” She says, “well I’ll have you know, that I gave him that drink before he left home”, and Shep said, “well Mrs. So-and-so, I don’t care how many drinks you give him but he’s not coming in the Wildcat Den with one”. But I think that to cap it all off, on his way of getting along with people, after we had opened the new center here, we were standing about in front of what is now your office and my office and we looked down the hall and there’s an adult sitting on the edge of one of the refreshment tables which was strictly against the rules. Shep looked at me and says, “looky there, that man down there’s sitting on that table and we don’t even let the children sit on the tables. What am I going to do?” I said, “I don’t know, I said, that’s your job Shep.” Well, some other people were standing there with me, so we just watched Shep when he went down there and he just walked up and the man got off of the table and they stood there and talked for a long time. Eventually Shep came back and he’s laughing when he came back and I said, “what did you tell him, Shep?” He said, “well I told him, if you don’t get off that table, two weeks suspension” and he said the man laughed and got off the table and then they had a nice friendly. Now to cap the whole thing though, when we were building or in the process of constructing this facility we’re sitting in today, some of the kids from the Wildcat Den went to Shep and said, “Shep, we want to have one of the rooms in the new facility named the Shep Lauter Room” and Shep said, “No, no,” he says. “They don’t name things after people until they’re dead” and says, “I want to stick around for a while.” Well they didn’t take that for an answer. They came to me. And Shep in the meantime had told me about them coming to him, so when they came to me, I gave them the same spiel, I said, no, you just don’t do that. So then they went to the City Manager and he told them the same thing. Well that really got them worked up so they just got some petitions and they got somewhere in the neighborhood of 700-750 names on the petition and took it to City Council and City Council said, “we’ll name the room after Shep Lauter” so...
Mr. Lauderdale: That’s where the votes were.
Mr. Yearwood: That’s where the votes were and too, I think that anyone in Oak Ridge that had any interest in the welfare of young people knew Shep Lauter. Everyone of those councilmen at that time, I can’t remember who all they were at that time, I’m sure everyone of them knew Shep either personally or had, maybe a few of them, had been teenagers under Shep, but they either knew of him through personal contact or knew of the type of work he did.
Interviewer: I know as a youngster growing up in Oak Ridge and participating in Wildcat Den and in the baseball program too, Shep was well loved and well liked and did a tremendous job with the youth like you were saying. But you know you mentioned something a few minutes ago that, of course, you don’t name a facility after someone who’s alive. I’m talking to you right here today and we have a facility named after you.
Mr. Yearwood: I’m afraid if I’d been here when that was getting ready to be done, I would have said the same thing that Shep did. But there’s a funny thing about that. Just before retiring I took a two weeks vacation and went to California and when I got back to Oak Ridge, I came, coming from Knoxville, I came up Emory Valley Road and turned right up by the ballpark and they were putting my name up on the sideboard. And that was the first inkling that that I’d had about it. I’ve had a great deal of pleasure, great deal of inward satisfaction of having been so honored because it is an honor. I run across someone every once in a while and, some place just in the last two or three days, and I had to write a check for something, and the young man took the check and put it in the cash register and, didn’t even look at the name on it, and he said well he did see it, the Energy Bank, and he said he lived in Oak Ridge for eight years. Carolyn was with me, and she said, did you ever play ball on Carl Yearwood Park? He said, I sure have and she said, well that’s him. My, my.
Interviewer: Well, I thought you were dead.
Mr. Yearwood: Well, I tell you now I had that experience too. We were having a party at the Hilyards and in the backroom and we didn’t have as many people show up for the party and they had a lot of customers waiting, so we told them just to go ahead and use the booths around us that we weren’t using. I was sitting at the table right in the center and this couple, two couples and then, that one child came in, and they sat down in a booth and I kind of noticed that this fellow sitting over on the side kept looking at me and I kept looking at him, trying get placed in my mind who he was. And he was trying, I found out later he was trying to get in his mind whether I was really who he thought I was. It was Paul Owens and he’d participated as a participant and umpire and official in softball, baseball and basketball for years. He had moved off from Oak Ridge. He came back and he thought they named the ballpark Carl Yearwood Park so he thought Carl Yearwood had gone, gone. He, finally, he finally broke down and says, “you are Rabbit aren’t you?” And I said, “yeah, I’m Rabbit” and he says, “boys, I knew it had to be but I didn’t think it was.” So, but I’ve run across a lot of people and it very unusual, and, I would say, for those who that they might eventually name a facility or a street or anything after them, that to go ahead and do it while they’re alive and let them enjoy it. You know Shep, during that last year that he was working with the Recreation Department, had a great joy in working with the kids in the Shep Lauter Room. Every time I have to convince somebody that I’m still alive, why, it’s nice. I wish that if they’d named Bob Hopkins Field after a fine young man worked closely with me, not a paid but a volunteer worker with the youth of Oak Ridge. He’d grown up in Oak Ridge and unfortunately hadn’t reached the mature age of retirement. But thank goodness they honored him by naming a baseball facility after him because baseball was the area in which he participated most greatly.
Interviewer: Bobby was an all American baseball player at UT wasn’t he?
Mr. Yearwood: No that was B. B.
Interviewer: That was B.B., his brother?
Mr. Yearwood: B.B., his older brother. I knew both of them in Fontana before I came to Oak Ridge. B.B.’s is quite a story too, I mean personally. When we lived in Fontana, B.B. came to me and wanted me to sponsor the tennis tournament for the boys and girls. I kind of put him off, I said, Bobby, B.B., I said, you organize it and run it and I’ll buy the trophies. He got 64 boys to play in the tennis tournament that he won and he got. But he was, now I think. What’s the other ballpark?
Interviewer: Grey Strang, I was going to mention we have a couple of other facilities, Grey Strang Park was named after Grey Strang...
Mr. Yearwood: After a tragic…
Interviewer: Yeah, a young man that died while he was employed with the City of Oak Ridge. It was a tragic accident. But, he was also a baseball player and ... Mr. Yearwood: …now...
Interviewer: …soon to be star, I think, at the University of Tennessee, an untimely death. We have a park on the eastern end...
Mr. Yearwood: Milt Dickens?
Interviewer: Milt Dickens Park.
Mr. Yearwood: Milt Dickens is legendary in Oak Ridge as far as I’m concerned or any ???? time, because he was not only the, an official himself of all sports and baseball, softball, football, but he was also, he served many years as a scheduling secretary for the official’s association. Of all the thankless jobs in the world that has to be the most thankless one. But he always went to training courses so that he himself could be informed of any rule changes, and pass them along to the other officials. And I’m sure the official association now functions very much on the same level as Milt Dickens helped in his time to raise it to. And a consequence that, I wish I could think of the fellow that used to be with the bus company, Bill something.
Interviewer: Bill Hatfield.
Mr. Yearwood: Bill Hatfield. Bill Hatfield should also be another one that some facility be named after, ‘cause he was the scheduling secretary on the original umpires group.
Interviewer: That’s interesting.
Mr. Yearwood: And he was an official himself. He served scheduling.
Interviewer: You mentioned Milt Dickens, it’s kind of ironic that his son Larry Dickens now is on City Council. Certainly don’t mean to eliminate anybody that a facility or structure has been named after, and I’m sure that I probably have, but certainly don’t mean to offend anyone if I have.
Mr. Yearwood: I don’t know of any other recreation facilities that have been designated after individuals.
Mr. Lauderdale: Something here named for Al Bissell isn’t there?
Mr. Yearwood: Oh yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah, the park that we’re here right now.
Mr. Yearwood: The park is named and I’m sure everybody knows the contribution that Al Bissell has made for Oak Ridge. You know, when I first retired, I started traveling with a friend of mine, peddling recreation equipment. I never went in to, a city manager or city administrator or county judge or anybody of that level, and mentioned I was from Oak Ridge, “Oh, I know your old mayor up there, boy… Old Al, Al, how’s Al doing?” I mean from one end of the state to another, everybody knows Al Bissell and that’s remarkable for a man to be known as extensively as Al was and, or Al is, thank goodness he still is. Although he’s not in the public eye right now like he was for years.
Mr. Lauderdale: A.K. Jr. makes the television news now because he’s trying to get some safety in trucking.
Interviewer: He’s Public Safety Commissioner.
Mr. Lauderdale: Yes, chancellor, chairman of the state utilities commission.
Interviewer: Well, how about the word Oak Ridge? Heard a lot about that as far as how the name was selected. Do ya’ll recall how that name was selected?
Mr. Yearwood: Well that was, that was selected.
Interviewer: Fairly obvious…
Mr. Lauderdale: I have heard…
Interviewer: …oak trees out here in the park but...
Mr. Lauderdale: I have heard that it was selected by someone in the hierarchy of the Manhattan District because, for its rustic connotation or uninconspicuous.
Mr. Yearwood: Inconspicuous.
Mr. Lauderdale: Now this ridge, the Black Oak Ridge runs from, I guess, from Union County all the way through, down into Roane County. This same ridge is on the geological maps and things like that, but I would...
Mr. Yearwood: I would say there’s nothing in the area that would, that Oak Ridge would have the connotation of, you know, that it would give somebody the chance to pinpoint.
Mr. Lauderdale: It wouldn’t be conspicuous.
Mr. Yearwood: Completely foreign to this area.
Mr. Lauderdale: …create curiosity and things like that. The anonymity was a key word for everything that had to do with the Manhattan Project, just be low key. And that, I’ve heard that was said and I can imagine that taking a U.S geological survey map which no doubt they did, looking at this, well there’s this Black Oak Ridge down through there, why don’t we just call it Oak Ridge. Strictly surmising.
Interviewer: There are a lot of interesting things I guess in regards to naming and so forth but that makes sense as far as being real close to Black Oak Ridge and Oak Ridge itself being named that. There’s one other facility and I think Rabbit you probably can enlighten us on how Big Turtle Park got its name.
Mr. Yearwood: That’s kind of recent vintage. Some time, a year or so before I was eventually retired, Ken Stillman was with me on a, we had been requested to select possible sites for future development of recreation facilities. And at that time it was known that water treatment area was going to be moved, and that that area which is now Big Turtle Park, would become available for development. We had a park supervisor, Brighton at that time. He and Ken and I went down to make a survey. We had great ideas. We were going to take the settlement beds and make gardens in them, I mean, raise plants and flowers. We were going to take some of the big brown water treatment areas and make a dry flower bed in one of them and a water flower garden in another, and we were going to convert the building where they had all the chemicals and everything, you know, treatment and reconvert that into a clubhouse for the women’s club. That kind of helped us survey and plan and work with flower and gardening and all. Just out of the clear blue sky, Ken looked over to the big domed, domed cover...
Interviewer: Digester?
Mr. Yearwood: Digester whatever, and says, he says, “you know when we start to develop this thing we could put a head on that thing and a little tail on it and put some ladders to climb, and some slides to slide down, and call it just like a big turtle, so lets just call this Big Turtle Park”. So we designated that area on our report as Big Turtle Park and then we had to, that we mention as a park beginning to develop there and that it was the name, Big Turtle Park, was selected. So as far as I know the big digester is going to be there for quite awhile and I can see no reason why it couldn’t. Now I’ve never been inside the digester.
Interviewer: I never had either but I think that’s it going to stay around awhile, I hope it is anyway because that is the focal point to the park.
Mr. Yearwood: Well, now that you know, you know when you envision it that might be a wild idea but I’ve never been in a, when you study the heavens….
Interviewer: Astronomy?
Mr. Yearwood: Yeah, but I mean what do you call the...
Interviewer: Observatory?
Mr. Yearwood: Observatory or what not. Why couldn’t the inside, couldn’t be cleaned out and made into a...
Interviewer: That’s an interesting idea, sure is.
Mr. Yearwood: Up at big park up around Eastman Kodak, a park in upper East Tennessee, they have one that’s domed with big easy chairs. You go back in there and you sit and flash all the stars in the heavens and give you a nice lecture about it.
Interviewer: That’s an real interesting idea. Maybe we ought to open the doors to that digester and see what’s in there. It’d certainly take some cleaning out wouldn’t it?
Mr. Yearwood: I think it, I think that might be the first stumbling block.
Interviewer: Well gentlemen, we are running out of tape once again and I want to thank both of you for coming down and talking with us today and once again this is March 14, 1985.
Transcribed: November 2005
Typed by LB